With a handful of dust and a heartful of doubt
by Lover44sin
Summary: He looked up at the sky once again, and dared to hope. "Please, God" he whispered, taking a white beaded rosary from his pants pocket "Please, send me a sign, any sign".


The winter sky was a dark gray when he looked up. It looked angry and miserable. A storm was coming. The first thing he took off was his coat, carefully folding it and resting it on the ground, a childish and silly habit he had picked up as a kid, to always fold his clothes. Next he took his shoes, and though he didn't need to take them off, he wanted to feel the concrete of the Reichsbrucke bridge under his feet. As he stepped up on the rail and looked up to Vienna, he thought of how much pain and misery that city had brought him. Nothing good ever came of it, and for a fragile little moment he wished he was back at Legnano, kicking his ball on the small street in front of his house while his mother looked from the window, just like it was when he was as a child. It was a silly thought and he knew it. His mother was not there anymore, God had taken her from him, God had taken everything from him.

God.

He looked up at the sky once again, and dared to hope. "Please, God" he whispered, taking a white beaded rosary from his pants pocket "Please, send me a sign, any sign" and as he squeezed the rosary on the palm of his hand like someone holding a secret to dear life, another fragile second passed. God really did not want anything to do with him. A failure, a complete failure to everyone and himself. He laughed bitterly, not really realising the tears that were forming on the corner of his eyes. All he saw and heard was thunder and lightning. Loud, oppressive, imposing. He opened his hand slowly, and the first thing to go was the rosary. His mother's rosary. This was the last piece of her he had, and if he was going to die, he wanted to take the rosary with him. The fall down to the Danube wasn't that tall, but as soon as his body hit the freezing and storming water because of the rain that was already falling, he would find his destiny.

He was ready to let go, let go of the railings of the bridge and of this miserable life he led. Let go and finally silence his thoughts. And he did, but as he closed his eyes he realised he was not falling forward into the river, but backwards towards the bridge.

Warm arms closed around his middle,

Someone' s heat against his back,

The cacophony inside his head became beautiful symphony for one little moment.

What an irony, he would later think, that the day Antonio Salieri decided to die, was also the day he met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

-/-

When Salieri came back to himself, he was on his house, on his bed, and if not for the loud sounds of an Iphone game nearby, he might as well think it was all a dream. It wouldn't be the first time he dreamt of dying, and it wouldn't be the first time waking up feeling like a coward for not doing it. There was someone sitting on a chair beside his bed, though, and all Salieri could ask was "Why did you do that?" Not who are you, or a thank you. His voice was soft, but clearly angry. He knew that was the man who pulled him off the edge.

As warm and almond like brown eyes looked at him, he recognised the look. A look he has been seeing people throw at his direction for the past couple of years. Pity. He didn't need pity, not from this stranger, not from anyone, he needed answers. When the stranger failed to speak, Salieri tried again,"Tell me!" his voice was louder, but it was cracking. He was cracking. The serenity in which the stranger smiled at him made him swallow so hard he wasn't sure if he was swallowing anything at all. "Because I didn't want you to die" it was all he said, as if it was all as simple as the game he was playing on his phone. Salieri could not comprehend how someone would pass by the bridge and upon seeing him there, felt they need to help. The thought of anyone wanting to help him was as much of a foreign in his head as he himself felt in that city.

"Im Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" The stranger, no, Mozart said after what seemed like a long moment of silence. "I found a library card with your address on it on the pocket of your coat, that's how I brought you home, if you...want to know" Salieri looked at him. Mozart still had a soft smile on his lips, and his eyes were focused on him. It felt uncomfortable.

"Antonio Salieri" It was all he said and looked towards the window. The rain was still falling.

-/-

Mozart was a hard presence to get rid of, it seemed. For all Salieri knew, the man could be a murderer, a thief, but at this point he didn't care. If the other wanted to do him harm, he would have let him jump off the bridge instead of helping him. Salieri drifted in and out of sleep, and every time he opened his eyes, Mozart seemed to be there, watching over him. Maybe he was an angel and Salieri was already dead. The thought was absurd, and as Salieri drifted back to sleep, he willed himself to no longer think of God. At all.

He felt a hand shake his shoulder gently, and having lost the track of time, he didn't knew how long he had been sleeping. Waking up was an agony. "You need to eat something, please wake up" Mozart had a soft voice. Salieri looked at him. At least there were no more pity in his eyes.

"Why are you still here, Mozart?" Salieri asked, voice hoarse from lack of use. There were days Salieri was completely silent, alone. Whenever that happened and he was forced to speak to other people, his voice would sound strange to his own ears, just like it was happening now. "Because I don't want you to be alone" he said. Why everything Mozat said seemed to be so simple? Was he making fun of Salieri?

"I've been alone my whole life, don't worry" Salieri started, though he had no intent in telling the other about his life, he continued "You should go back to your life. I will be fine". It was a lie, clearly. Salieri would not be fine because he was never fine. And Mozart saw through it. It made Salieri's head hurt. "You didn't have much food in your kitchen, so I went out and did your groceries. I made some soup for you" he said, completely dismissing Salieri's request. Salieri just looked at Mozart for a long moment before sighing. He nodded, sitting up against the headboard of the bed and accepting the food the other had brought for him.

-/-

Salieri still drifted in and out of sleep, but slowly as the days passed, he started to finally move. He took showers, now. He walked towards the big window on his room and sat on a chair, looking out. Mozart was still there. It puzzled Salieri that a stranger was the only person in his life in that moment, the only person taking care of him, even though he never asked to be taken care of.

Mozart talked a lot, though. He would always come around lunchtime, do their lunch, sit nearby whenever Salieri chose to be, and take out his macbook from his bag, tapping away. All the while, talking, telling Salieri about his day, about his life, about his dreams. Salieri never talked at all. He came to learn, though, that Mozart had an older sister that he lived with, Maria Anna, which he called Nannerl for some reason, and that she was an human rights lawyer. He came to learn that their parents still lived in Salzburg where he was born, and that even though his father had been very rigid in raising them, they would visit them almost every weekend.

But learning that Mozart was a music student at the University of Music and Performing Arts of Vienna had made Salieri angry. So incredibly angry that he saw red. His fists were shut so tight that his nails indented his palms, drawing blood, and when he opened his hands, was to throw the plates of food Mozart had just put on the table (he had made progress enough to sit at the small table on his living room to eat) on the ground with a painful scream of rage. Of course Mozart was a musician, of course he had been saved by someone not only younger, but more successful than him. Of course that was why God had kept him alive. To mock him. To make the feeling of being a failure even deeper. Mozart did not come back for five days after that display of rage.

-/-

When Mozart finally came back, he found that the food was still on the floor and Salieri on his bed, not even under the sheets. He did not get up, he did not shower or do basic needs like going to the bathroom. The room smelled strongly of ammonia. Salieri had never felt so ashamed of acting in such a childish way when he heard Mozart enter his room again, and for a moment, the feeling of deep loneliness was gone. Why was he clinging to Mozart that way? Why was he allowing that stranger to see him in such a broken state?

Mozart approached the bed in small, but calm steps. Of course Salieri's angry reaction had scared him, and as he realised he didn't know anything about him other than the fact that he had a library card and a beautiful piano in his living room, Mozart felt Salieri needed time, felt that maybe he had imposed too much even with the intention of helping. So he left, but his head never went with him. All Mozart could think of was Salieri, on how fragile he looked, and how no one should be this sad at such a young age. So he went back, even though Nannerl protested fervently.

Gently, Mozart laid a hand on the top of Salieri's head, fingers softly curling on the long, soft dark locks. Salieri froze, his heart beating so fast he was sure Mozart could hear it too, and then a strange feeling went through his body. He felt like being electrocuted at the same time as he felt like some strange calmness washed over him. He only noticed he was sobbing when he felt the violent movement of his shoulders. Suddenly he couldn't breathe, it all felt too much. Mozart might have saved him from drowning in the Danube, but saving him from himself was so much harder. "You're going to be alright, Antonio" Mozart said in a soft voice, hand still gently resting on Salieri's hair, fingers pressed against his scalp.

To Salieri it felt like hours of crying before finally being able to regain his ground. Mozart never asked anything, but Salieri felt the sudden urge to say something "I was once studying music at the University of Music and Performing Arts of Vienna, too. Until I wasn't anymore". His voice was a whisper, and it almost sounded like he was still crying.

-/-

Slowly, Salieri started to progress again. When Mozart got there on the afternoons, he would have already showered, his clothes clean and he had started to do some chores again, he was even willing to sit beside Mozart as he watched Netflix on his macbook and made silly comments. The man seemed to be an endless ball of energy, even when he was quiet. Waking up and getting out of bed would still be the hardest part, that terrible feeling of loneliness as he heard the silence of his apartment. Until he remembered he wouldn't be alone for long. The day Salieri realised, not free of frighten, that his feelings for Mozart had started to shift, was when he accidently heard Mozart facetiming with his sister on the phone.

"Wolfgang, please, didn't you say he seemed better? Why are you still going to his house?" Maria Anna asked. She didn't sound angry or saying it in prejudice, just genuinely protective of her brother.

"I just...don't want him to feel alone, Nannerl" Mozart answered with a soft sigh. It made Salieri cringe.

"It's not your job to be his companion, Wolfgang. You should be out celebrating the fact that the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra invited you to play a piano piece!" She said with a smile, and for a moment Salieri thought his knees would give in. He remembered how it was to play with an orchestra and be praised for it. That sinking feeling of anger was taking him again, and he closed his hands in fists one more time as he left quickly for his room.

Salieri closed his eyes, though. Closed his eyes as tight as he could, and he could feel his body shaking. Mozart was not the cause of his failures, he remembered himself. Don't put this on him again or you will regret. The task of not letting himself going under seemed Herculaneum, and when he felt Mozart's hand rest in between his shoulders on his back, his hands finally fell open to his sides. "Your sister is right, Mozart, you should go celebrate" he said, his back still to Mozart.

Slowly he was turned around, and Mozart's hand fell on his arm "I'm sorry you heard that, Salieri. She didn't mean any harm to you" he says, searching in Salieri's eyes. As much as Salieri's eyes were beautiful and expressive, all it seemed to know how to express was sadness, and it broke Mozart's heart every time.

"I know she didn't, but I agree with her. You should go" Salieri said, and as he said it, he could feel his insides turning, trying to claw their way out. It hurt. It hurt a lot to think of Mozart gone, but Salieri knew this was not a fair situation. All Mozart did was give, and all Salieri did was take and take. He felt the soft movement of Mozart's hand sliding down his arm to gently hold his hand. The gentle weight and warmth of Mozart's hand on his made it even worse. "Do you really want me to go?" He asked, and Salieri saw the sadness in Mozart's eyes for the first time. It made him feel sick and dirty, causing someone so bright to be so sad.

"No, but I don't want to hold you here. You have your life, you should be living it and not here taking care of an invalid like me" It was soft spoken, but it was the truth. Salieri held everyone back, and it was why people always ended up leaving him. Mozart shook his head and looked at Salieri for a long moment before squeezing his hand "I am living my life. Being here with you is living my life. I can celebrate that later, after I play" he says, and there is something more he meant to say, there is something there. Salieri waits.

Mozart kisses Saliere softly on the lips.

The ground seems like it was taken from under Salieri's feet.

Everything happens at once.

-/-

At first it's just kisses, gentle touches of hands, a lingering look. Mozart wants to make sure he is not taking advantage of Salieri's fragile state of mind, that he is not forcing himself on him. All he wants is for Salieri to progress, to feel healthy and fine. To Salieri, Mozart could not be the medical help he needed, but he was so much more. He was a friend, a beacon of light in someone's darkness.

Everyday Salieri made progress, always at his own time, trying to understand and voice his feelings. Internalizing causes resentment, Nietzsche had said in one of the manny books Salieri owned, and which he was slowly gaining the pleasure of reading back again, just like other pleasures. Eating, going outside to the tiny balcony on his living room to have a smoke, looking up at the sky without wondering if God was there watching him crumble or not.

The sex came as an organic evolution of their feelings, part of something neither was able to properly voice. It was well into spring, when the air in Vienna started to become lighter, brighter. Mozart was Salieri's spring. They were standing on the balcony one end of afternoon, watching as the sun began to turn its bright colors to softer ones. As Salieri stood behind Mozart, arms softly around his waist, he buried his nose just behind Mozart's ear, unhurly bleached blond hair against Salieri's cheek. It seemed like his body was reacting on its own, and slowly, Salieri's hands found its way underneath the front of Mozart's shirt, touching the soft, warm skin of his stomach. There was no part of Salieri's mind that though this was wrong, there was no part of Salieri's mind that though anything but Mozart.

As Mozart slowly turned, he searched in Salieri's eyes for confirmation. It was the first time Mozart realised that Salieri didn't look so sad anymore. Maybe he was healing, and as they walked towards the bedroom and laid down on Salieri's bed, Salieri had nothing but reverence and respect as he touched Mozart, slowly taking off clothes, kissing warm skin, and when Mozart called him "Antonio" in a soft, breathless voice, Salieri smiled.

When they moved, they moved together, soft voices, but hands gripping. Salieri held Mozart's white thighs, sure it would leave marks. It thrilled him to know that. And everytime Mozart would call him by his name, some more animalistic part of Salieri would wake up, wanting to bite, to mark Mozart his. And he did. They moved together until they were both sweaty, and the marks of nails on Salieri's back matched the purple bruise on Mozart's neck. Salieri found his release with a soft spoken "Wolfgang" against Mozart's ear.

And then the room was quiet, for awhile. Everything seemed to be still, suspended in time just for them, that moment. Salieri was the one to break the silence, but with eyes closed as he rested his head on Mozart's chest, Mozart's hand in his hair. He spoke with intent for the first time. Spoke about how it was just him and his mother and brother Francesco for the longest of times. Spoke about how his mother's long dark brown hair would flow on the wind when they would go for a walk near the Olona river in Langnano, the city he was born in and raised in Italy. Until the day his brother accidently drowned in the river, and how he felt so guilty.

He talked about how his mother met Rosenberg and married him after a long time of depression and having only Salieri to care for her, and how not much later, she passed away. He talked about Rosenberg was an abusive drunk and never cared much for him, and that he only got his chance to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts of Vienna because one of his school teachers saw how talented he was and helped apply and win a full scholarship. Leaving Italy had been a relief to Salieri, something he never thought he would do. He talked about meeting Therese. She played the violin so beautifully Salieri fell in love with her and wanted to get married. He talked about how well he was succeeding at school and how he was playing for the Vienna's National Theater when everything came to an abrupt stop, and then Salieri fell silent.

Reliving those painful memories was hard, but now it wasn't a crippling feeling anymore. There, with one of Mozart's arms around him and the other hand on his hair, he could finally let go of all the weight he had been caring with him. So he talked more. He told Mozart how he became more and more sad. He talked about how alone he felt after his family died all he had left that resembled some unity was Therese. Until he found out Therese had no longer any interest on him and was actually having an affair with one of his best friends, Lorenzo. His life became the orchestra. Composing, playing, sleepless nights where he could not close his eyes without feeling like he was being smothered, often dreaming of red hands pulling him down. He had a nervous breakdown one day before a presentation, his whole body trembled as he screamed. They sent him home and with that, he lost his music as well.

He talked about how he used to believe in God but not anymore after everything that happened. So he closed himself in, shutting everything and everyone down, trying to numb himself from the pain until the day he decided to end it all on the bridge, and how much he regrets having lost his mother's rosary to the river that day.

When it was over, Salieri felt like he could breathe better even though he felt emotionally exhausted, and after feeling a gentle kiss being pressed to the top of his head, he smiled softly. For awhile now, Salieri knew he could no longer keep using Mozart as a cane for his emotions. It wasn't fair to him, and all he wanted was to make Mozart happy, but first he had to learn how to deal with his own emotions. "I called a psychiatrist earlier today and made an appointment for next week" he said, and this time his voice was a little louder, surer. Mozart just smiled, pulling Salieri's face up for a kiss.

-/-

It was well into the summer and a month into therapy when Salieri started playing again. Seeing Mozart playing his piano, hearing how talented and bright Mozart was made Salieri want to feel the thrill of making music again. Now that the engines of his thoughts were finally starting to heal, he could recognise the itch for being creative again.

It was after a lunch on Nannerl's house (and Salieri was also thrilled that now he could go out on the street again without feeling the overwhelming sense of instability and paranoia that it was having to deal with other people), that his fingers touched the keys of the piano again. He played idly the keynotes and soon Mozart had joined him, following Salieri on the symphony he heard insite his head when Mozart pulled him off the bridge and saved him. In all the ways he needed to be saved.

"Don't you sometimes feel like you belong in another time?" Salieri asked in a soft voice as they still played, fingers brushing lightly against each other. Mozart paused for a moment, interrupting their song. At first he frowned, and then he let out a laugh. A delightful sound that never failed to make Salieri's heart beat faster. "I do" Mozart finally answered, and all Salieri could do was smile and press a gentle kiss to Mozart's lips.

For the first time in years, Antonio Salieri truly felt he was going to be alright,

light,

happy.


End file.
